new thread glucose experiment

[dteresa]

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.a ... id=1188719

I started a new thread pertaining to the glucose experiment. The above is a long article but there is a section on diabetes and three tables that might be interesting. You can see where dr. Esselstyn is getting his information on nitric oxide and age related decrease in the production of nitric oxide and why he recommends certain leafy greens although the article says nothing about these. Does the use of certain leafy greens overcome the inability to produce endothelial progenitor cells by providing the nitric oxide directly that these cells would have provided?

It appears here that HbA1c is related to heart health but the article says nothing about two hour post prandials. This does not mean they are not important but does imply that those who are most worried about two hour post prandials might be barking up the wrong tree if the HbA1c is low enough. Especially in the absence of high lipid numbers. I don't know.

I had a hard time understanding a lot of the article but take note of the section on lipids. It appears that contrary to what we often say, that HDL and trigs are not as important as LDL may or may not be true. They do not speak of efflux in this article. It also shows that Jimmy Moore and those low carbers who say high ldl and high cholesterol do not have anything to do with heart disease are misinformed.

I also think after reading this article that you cannot get rid of diabetes but only control it. Diabetics do not produce the amount of endothelial progenitor cells that non diabetics produce. And an older diabetic produces even less. Which is probably one reason diabetics are more subject to heart disease.

Ironically, a Ted Talk by dr. Li describes the anti angiogenic effects of some foods on tumor growth. Mostly those we would normally eat on this diet he says slows the growth of tumors because of their anti agiogenic effect. However, for heart disease we want angiogenesis. So what? We cure cancer and get heart disease. Or we fix our heart disease and are then a candidate for cancer. And if those foods we normally eat are anti angiogenic do they reduce our chances for a healthy heart with plenty of EPC's? The prospect of eating the enormously expensive quantity of cooked greens as per esselstyn six times per day is daunting.

didi

[eXtremE]

The prospect of eating the enormously expensive quantity of cooked greens as per esselstyn six times per day is daunting.

Yeah, I know....

I am eating twice a day now but 6 times a day...each day.......whew! It is hard to eat any food that many times per day IMO in appreciable amounts unless you have a really ravenous appetite and probably very physically active.

Didi, you have T2D but are controlling it with diet now. How were you first diagnosed if you don't mind sharing? Were you having any kind of symptoms?

[dteresa]

Oh yeah. Extreme fatigue, unquenchable thirst, frequent urination, blurry vision. I knew about diabetes being a possibility if you are fat, which I was but had gone twenty years without diabetes and I guess I thought it therefore couldn't happen to me. Apparently having a college education in a hard science does not provide immunity against stupidity. Wasn't really aware of plant eating and instead got a booklet from the doc, put out by a pharmaceutical company. I never counted carbs but watched calories and exercised like crazy. I bought myself a meter which the doc did not even recommend. Nor did she recommend diabetes education. Of which I am glad because I suspect I would have gotten the same carb counting bad advice as they hand out now. In a couple of months I took myself off the meds and when I was tested at three months my HA1c was 5.2 or 5.3 I can't remember which. Took a lot of years to lose all the weight I needed to. Had a heart attack even after I had lost more than 150 pounds. Since then have been totally plant based. Will it help?

didi

[colonyofcells]

Since I don't have money to test my blood sugar 24 hours for 3 months, I do take the hba1c seriously since it sorts of give an average over 3 months. So far, based on hba1c, I am out of the prediabetes range for now bec the lifestyle changes seem to be working but I would like to get hba1c lower some more to help me live longer. Post prandial blood sugar seems to be a temporary thing or short term thing and don't seem to be worth monitoring too closely if diabetes control is already good.

[bridgetohealth]

I started a new thread pertaining to the glucose experiment.
I also think after reading this article that you cannot get rid of diabetes but only control it. Diabetics do not produce the amount of endothelial progenitor cells that non diabetics produce. And an older diabetic produces even less. Which is probably one reason diabetics are more subject to heart disease.

didi

Interesting extensive article, thanks. The article says that smokers can vastly improve their production of those cells by quitting. However, if they return to smoking, they quickly revert to the before-quitting stage. It may be the same for diabetics, it's hard to know -- I didn't see anything in the article (reading only first part carefully then skimming) that seemed to say definitively that you can't get rid of diabetes. It's so unusual for people to do what you've done and totally turn their diabetes around with diet and lifestyle and no meds, that I don't think you can make any assumptions based on most studies. The diabetics they studied were probably diabetics at the beginning and diabetic at the end. Maybe you are now like a "normal" person, or maybe you're still a diabetic but in remission (controlled), or maybe the way to think of it is being an ex-diabetic, like ex-smoker in this study. You have to be more careful not because of differences in your success on this WOE than another woman your age, but because if you go back to SAD it would be much worse for you much more quickly than for her.

[dteresa]

Yes, that's exactly how I think of it. You can't get rid of diabetes like you can an infection. Diabetics produce fewer endothelial progenitor cells and older people produce half what a younger person produces normally. So even with lower blood sugars does this "cure" the low production of epc's in the bone marrow? You notice that experimental bone marrow transplants raise the production of epc's. Thus the higher incidence of heart attacks in diabetics. I had a heart attack after losing a whole lot of weight and getting my fasting levels down to around ninety. It really did take me by surprise. Because, too, I had no microvascular problems like retinopathy etc. I would have thought that microvascular problems would have been like a canary in a coal mine but evidently this is not true. I have to rethink post prandial numbers now. However, you can see from the article that the researchers did not include this in the list of things that can raise epc's. But HDL and trigs were in the list. Plant based advocates seem to say they are not as important with respect to heart disease but from this article it seems as though they are.

didi